UCLA Merger

The notion that undergraduate art education might be sacrificed even for as great an art collection as Norton Simon’s is unthinkable and unnecessary (April 9, Metro, “UCLA Reveals Plan to Merge Fine Arts and Science Colleges.”)

Great graduate art departments in this country (at Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, and Iowa to name a few) are fed by promising, well-educated fine arts majors.

This elitist proposal would eliminate teaching assistant jobs often offered to needy, talented graduate students. Taxpayers and their children who may wish an arts major must then look to already overcrowded public institutions or to expensive private ones.

Public education is at risk when drastic changes, appropriate to private institutions are stampeded through without careful review, rebuttal, discussion and hearings.

JUDITH PACHT

Los Angeles